As Internet changes, so do taxes

What once involved going online with America Online or Prodigy (ask your parents) with a 2,400-baud dial-up modem (ask your grandparents) is now so routine that even last year’s technology seems outdated.

The Internet has become ingrained into so much of what we do, whether business or personal, that an outage of mere minutes can send panic through our lives.

Speeds have become lightning-fast — try to explain to a teenager how it once took several minutes to download a photo. Content has become robust to the point of being excessive —although the 390 people who search each month for articles on “how to make my cat love me” would disagree.

Many not-so-old-timers can remember how “surfing the Web” involved tying up the landline for hours and hoping the connection stayed strong. Now, the answers to life’s mysteries are as close as a smartphone or tablet and a WiFi connection away. Who would have imagined in those early days that it would be possible to send an email from a boat on the lake or take part in an international conference call while sitting at home.

One remnant of those bygone beginnings still lingers, though, and needs to remain.

In 1998, as personal computer sales were skyrocketing and online access was growing from a few providers to an explosion of services and speeds, Congress saw the need to foster that growth by prohibiting taxes on Internet access. Through the Internet Tax Freedom Act, states and local municipalities were prohibited from taking a slice from the money consumers were spending for Internet providers.

With more and more people online these days, some efforts are being made to repeal the temporary ban. Congress earlier this year considered a proposal that would have made the prohibition permanent, but it was blocked in the Senate (Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin was among one of the obstacles). Lawmakers have extended the temporary exemption until October while they debate its future.

Proponents of such a tax see it as a potential windfall for struggling local governments and liken it to such things as taxes on gasoline. The biggest difference is that things such as the gas tax actually do some good because the revenues are used to build roads and bridges.

The likely upshot of adding taxes to Internet access would be the same excessive money-grabs that have accompanied cellphone service — taxes are an average of 17 percent in Illinois — or “creative” new taxes like the absurd 9 percent fee in effect in Chicago for streaming online services like Netflix or Hulu.

The effect would be chilling to the natural progressive growth of the Internet. It would be especially troubling for lower- and fixed-income users who can already find it difficult to afford service.

Online access stopped being a luxury decades ago. It has become a necessity for consumers and businesses and the government should not change such a critical aspect in that growth.